On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:50:24AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...] > I literally grew up on command-lines[1]. But despite that, I still > much prefer GUIs for anything a GUI reasonably works for: Like file > browsers, DB admin, manual DB queries, debuggers, Tortoise*, etc. > (although for web server configuration I've come to vastly prefer > config files - MUCH easier to remotely manage, plus the settings for > files/paths are necessarily tied to the file/path *name*, not the > physical file, so you don't kave to keep messing with them every time > something's moved/renamed/deleted/recreated)
OK, this isn't exactly GUI, but have you tried mc? I remember in the good ole DOS days, Norton Commander (of which mc is a clone) was one of the best things around. It made DOS usable. In fact, even pleasant. > When I'm on Linux, I've come to do most things on the command line > just because 1. Many things still can only be done on the cmd line, > and 2. Linux file managers suck about as much as the Windows command > line. I'm proficient with bash, and I do love it as far as command > lines go (And damn near anything can be scripted, which is fantastic), > but I hate using it for file manipulation - just seems really clumsy > compared to a *good* GUI file manager (which I've yet to find on > Linux). Although the autocomplete *is* a huge help. Yeah, you should check out mc. Though I haven't used it for at least a decade, so I can't vouch for whether it's still usable. I've yet to find a better file manager than the original NC, though. > Although that said, even the Windows file manager has been plummeting > downhill ever since Vista. I don't know wtf MS has been thinking. I hate the windows file manager with a passion. It's so difficult to make it display things properly, there's no way (not easily anyway) to specify a glob filter in a huge directory, change sorting criteria with a keystoke, etc.. I find `ls | grep` much more palatable than that painful 1-pixel wide horizontal scrollbar that leaps several pages per pixel when you're trying to find something in a truly huge directory, I mean folder. > Keyboard/mouse switching comes pretty naturally to me. Part of it's > probably years of practice, and the other part is that I use > trackballs which tend to mostly stay put. I used to do a lot of keyboard/mouse switching too. Until I switched to ratpoison, a window manager that doesn't require the mouse. Since then I've found that my speed almost doubled. Keyboard/mouse switching is much better when it's a laptop with that "nipple" thing in the middle of the keyboard. In fact, that's the only case of mouse-switching that is comparable in speed to a keyboard-only interface. Unless, of course, you're trying to manipulate graphical stuff like draw freehand curves, in which case you'll want to be on the mouse 99% of the time anyway. For discrete tasks like typing or navigating menus, keyboard shortcuts are unbeatable. > [1] First AppleSoft BASIC and occasionally the built-in memory-editor > and AppleSoft Logo. Later, MS-DOS 6-ish and occasionally gwbasic > (normally used QBASIC instead, though) [...] Ooooh! Another Apple II veteran! Ah, the good ole Apple II. Believe it or not, my dad actually still has a couple o' 30-year-old Apple II's that he actually *still uses*. He wrote a little personal accounting app in Dbase, and has been using it for the last 3 decades. Never felt the need to upgrade. Of course, now he also has a modern-day laptop and modern PCs in the office. But that old faithful Apple II is still chugging away... T -- Береги платье снову, а здоровье смолоду.
